Who in the world uses a phone to talk on anyways? For my next phone I would seriously consider just grabbing the LTE version of whatever the next Nexus 7 turns out to be.

I laughed and then thought of my time on my iPhone 5 - I don't talk on it at all...which is a good thing as I only have a 100 minute a month plan. LOL

The iPhone 6 Huge (as I'm jokingly calling it) is just too damn big. It's designed to be stored in a purse instead of a pocket. I'd be too afraid of breaking it when I sat down or something common. The iPhone 6...I dunno. I love my 5 simply because I think it's the perfect size - something small and easy to pocket and carry, but just big enough to actually do things on. The 6 breaks that.

It may be ludicrous with today's technology, but in my opinion it's the only way these things will ever be worth a damn. I'm not spending $350 to carry around a piece of equipment that offers the same functionality as my phone as long as I'm also carrying around my phone.

You've said everything I want to say. I haven't even thought of having a watch since I got my first cell phone quite a long time ago. There's just no point. And as such there's no point to this too.

Xenoblade Chronicles is likely to be an anomaly instead of the norm since developers will not want to limit their install base. In that way, it will be an upgrade that is nice to have instead of something that is mandatory.

Except now developers not only have more system power to use, but a second analog stick built in, AND an extra pair of L and R buttons.

So either all the functions will get used, and alienate the old users, or none of the functions will get used, because the install base won't have the consoles.

This is EXACTLY like Kinect on the XB1 and 360. Not everybody will have one, so NOBODY will make a game that requires it.

I swear, Nintendo has the worst marketing department on the planet. This is even worse than the name "Wii U". I'm sure there won't be any confusion at all when games that can't be played on the 3DS and 2DS but can be played on the "New 3DS" come out.

I agree. As one of my mottoes goes:

"The average person is a complete idiot."

This is going to bomb and going to bomb hard. Either consumers will never understand what the difference between the 3DS and the New 3DS are (especially on game purchases), or the people themselves will rebel over this 'new and improved' version and drop Nintendo.

They are not Apple. They can't pull a 'new and improved' device every year like they do.

Looking at one of Tomb Raider's developer's twitter it seems they may have got blindsided by this yesterday, and he doesn't seem too thrilled about it either.

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest that even the developers got blindsided by this. Because they know IT'S FUCKING RETARDED.

So, let me get this straight: The TR reboot didn't make its (entirely unrealistic) sales goals when it launched, and now it's going exclusive (timed or not, who the hell knows) on the console that's selling THE LEAST?

BTW, the PS4 hit 10 million units BOUGHT BY PEOPLE today (or was announced today anyhow). What is the XB1 at? Who knows, because they still use the outdated (because it looks better) 'sold to retailers'. But I do know it's nowhere near where the PS4 is at.

1) I can't believe they upgraded to a new iPhone right now. As you mentioned. The 6 is due next month!2) The iPhone at least should happily be able to text if it's on wifi even if it has no signal. Or so I'd think.3) If Sprint calls their house a dead zone, they should offer you one of their 'hook this into your router so you'll get telephone service' things absolutely free. Get that. That said...yeah, Sprint isn't telling the truth there. If you have 3-4 bars, you're not in a dead zone. Everything should work just fine without any problems.

I thought that Telltale completely dropped/returned the King's Quest license because their Walking Dead series did SO dang well.

Also, personally, I expect the 'just using the company name to try to do something nostalgic based which will be crap' thing, especially out of a company like Actizard. It's not like they can rerelease the games (because they've all been on GoG for like ever now - in fact, go buy and play them now!).

Yes it's 4G/LTE/whatever it's called supported, and there's plenty of places in the Phoenix area that have it. Strangely enough not at my house despite where it is, but I have wifi so that really doesn't matter.

Have I done any traveling with it? Nope. But since it piggybacks on AT&T as far as the network goes, I doubt I'll have any problems if I decide to do so.

yeah, I've never understood the drive to buy a phone full price either unless you travel out of the country a lot. Otherwise, you pay the same monthly rate I do as a subscriber but paid more for your phone. I know it's due to the companies not wanting to cut profits though.

I bought my iPhone 5 outright because on T-Mobile, I have 100 minutes, unlimited text, unlimited data, and free wi-fi calling for $30 (plus like 3 bucks in tax) a month.

So over the usual 2 year agreements...yeah, I save a crapload of money.

Honestly, I was worried that lightning wouldn't strike twice with Marvel (the first was when they turned Thor into a pretty fantastic film series), but they knocked it out of the ballpark with Guardians.

Also, MAKE SURE you stay for the after-credit sequence. It is so amazing that I could flat out tell you what it is and nobody here (who hasn't seen the movie yet) would believe me.

And I got a great tiny poster as I was seeing it opening night (or first performance period, I dunno) over at my local IMAX.

One thing to keep in mind is to use Hibernate (Start - Shutdown - Hibernate) instead of Sleep. Hibernate (in theory, as I've had it wake up on its own during transport somehow), shuts the computer completely off to boot back up quickly later. Like 5 seconds quickly. The joys of SSD drives - it's so fast.

Did not know about the screenshot thing - that could be useful. Thanks!

I need to look around at firmware updates (or if I even want to go that route) - I've just done the usual Windows patches and haven't had any issues.

Personally, the only touchpad issues I've had is where it (and the rest of the keyboard) seem to go into a 'sleep mode' of sorts. Keys work instantly if the backlighting of the keyboard isn't on, but the trackpad takes a second or two to 'wake up'. Then again I don't use it much (the trackpad) as I always have my mouse hooked up and running. *shrugs*

And I've had wifi issues where it's just 'not as fast' as it is when it's plugged into the mains. But then again I've had this issue with -every- laptop I've owned in like the last 10 years. I think it's part of just How Windows Works. Although if there's a way to override it, I'd love to hear it.

EDIT: Looking at the PA posts, I agree that yes, there is a 'hover lag' that Gabe talks about, but it doesn't seem to affect anything that I've used my Surface 3 for.

May I recommend you get the Arc Touch Surface Edition mouse? It's a decent enough mouse on its own (and folds flat for easily stuffing into a small bag for travel), but it's also Bluetooth based, which means you don't have to clog up your one USB port for a cable or adapter or anything else.

Also, I got mine at Best Buy (didn't want to drive ages to the only Microsoft store in the state). Despite it being Best Buy, the crew there were quite nice and helpful and didn't push anything on me short of their warranty (which I turned down). And then I went back the next day to grab said mouse and a case to take my Surface and everything else to and fro.

OneNote is really cool. You can even access it with the device off...somehow. I don't understand what trickery they're using. Just tap the back of the pen (which works quite nice) and OneNote boots up no matter what the device is doing. And it looks like real handwriting, too, instead of just random lines. It follows and displays your marks very accurately. Also, OneNote is a Metro app ONLY, so for me at least, it'll drop back into it until I hit the Windows button to go back to Desktop mode.

And the stylus is surprisingly well made, too. It does what people says it does, although I put a screen protector on my Surface the instant I bought it, so I have no idea how it feels without. And I've seen no input lag of any sort, no matter what I'm doing to the system, and I was stressing it pretty heavily with a full screen stream via Twitch for hours on end when I first bought it.

I run my Surface entirely in Desktop mode. I absolutely despise the giant icon interface of mess (Metro) so I never ever see it. But the size of everything seems fine (but it's at 1 'slider mark' past Smaller - by default it's 2 marks up), although at my level, some people will find it tiny. User's choice. And short of gaming (again, haven't done much), my desktop apps (browser, Steam, Pidgin chat client, etc) all work happily.

It's easy to get into the settings for screen size - Right Click the desktop, hit Screen Resolution, then Make text and other items larger and smaller. Adjust the slider from there, hit okay.

$300 for 4GB of RAM is...wow just such a crazy price. Yes, I realize that more is better, but in this case, it's not worth that kind of money for the upgrade in my eyes. That said, the included 4GB should be enough for light games like Civ 5. I've personally only run Pinball Arcade on it, and have done so with no problem. Maybe I'll go install Shadowrun Returns just because it has a touch interface too and try that out for fun.

Finally, I think the Surface RTs (the non-real-Windows Surfaces) came with free Office...because you weren't getting a full OS with your purchase. The Surface 3 does not have the RT option - it is only available as a full WinOS 8.1 machine.

1) No version gives you Office for free. Come on now - that's Microsoft's cash cow. They even 'rent' it to you for a yearly free nowadays (although my local Best Buy still had the 'buyable' version which works forever).

2) IMHO, get the $999 one (and then spend $150 for a keyboard). It has a SD-XC slot supporting up to 128GB of storage...which will cost you a SHIT TON less than Microsoft's absolutely ripoff prices for getting a bigger SSD drive. Seriously, $300 to go from 128GB to 256GB, along with 4GB of RAM to 8GB? An insult.

3) That said, I'm typing this post on my $999 model with keyboard...and I really love it. It's just the right size for a secondary laptop/tablet, it has a fantastic absurdly high resolution screen on it (so expect to use the 'zoom' function that Windows has, which has issues with a few things unfortunately), and it has a great battery life. It's even capable of gaming to a limited extent (just don't expect miracles). Although I have not tried out Steam's streaming function from my true gaming rig to see how that performs.

4) As a small laptop, and even as a tablet for reading lots of PDFs and such in a vertical orientation, I have few complaints. My big ones is that the Virtual Keyboard sucks if you're at all used to say, a cell phone keyboard or something like an iPad or such. It offers NOTHING but a basic generic keyboard. No auto correct, no auto capitalization, no auto anything. And the layout stinks.

That said, I've found out how to bring up the 'real' keyboard that has been with Windows since like forever (under the Ease of Use Access Center in Windows 8, not sure on older versions), and that keyboard is far more useful if you're say, typing with the pen or something as it's an exact duplicate of any keyboard you've seen since keyboards were widely used. And it's infinitely resizeable and minimizeable and such. In my experience however, the auto-suggest words did not work with programs I tried it on (that said, very few programs), so I dunno if that is a Windows problem or not. I'd have to test it more.

5) I've had little experience using it as a laptop on my lap, but it seems that the new magnet introduced with the new keyboard, along with the very large range of angles the stand can be put to, make it seem like it would work quite well.

6) My cat constantly walks all over this keyboard whenever she wants attention. She avoided my actual laptop I had before this. I'm not sure why.

So far, this has been a good (and expensive) purchase. I'm glad I bought it though. Any further questions? Ask away.